Guide to Poetics
and Prosody

Think of the major technical components of poetry as roughly
equivalent to the way music is represented on the page, turning something you
hear into something you can see.

I. RHYME

A rhyme is two or more words or phrases that repeat the same
sounds. The matching sounds are usually, but not always, at the end of poetic
lines.

As melody is to music, so is RHYME to poetry.The sounds of vowels are what create most
rhymes. Words whose sounds don’t match are (somewhat) like different notes on a
musical scale (c, d, e, etc.) .

end rhyme= the ususal
form, where the last vowels in different lines are what rhyme

internal rhyme = where vowels rhyme within a
single line or within multiple lines

To mark up a poem for
rhyme, you assign a single lower-case alphabetical letter, starting with ‘a’ to
the sound of the last word in the line.

Whatever the first sound or end rhyme is, mark it ‘a’.If the next word has the same vowel sound
(tree, sea or tree, see), mark the next line ‘a’.IF the next line has a different vowel sound,
mark it ‘b’ Lines with the same end vowel sound, the same rhyme, get marked
with the same letter. A series of marked lines will create a rhyme scheme, for example abab or aabbcc

Example: The
first four lines of Byron's "She Walks in Beauty":

She walks in beauty like the nighta

Of cloudless climes and starry skiesb

And all that's best of dark and brighta

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.b

In this case a and b are both exact or perfect rhymes. Notice that different letters can produce the same
vowel sound (skies/eyes). Any pattern of lines that
alternate vowel sounds in this way form an example of alternate rhyme.

Named Rhymed groups of lines:

couplet= any pair of rhyming lines

Marked Example: last
two lines of My Galley (p. 361):

Drowned is
reason that should me consorta

And I remain despairing of the porta

triplet
= group of 3 lines with the same rhyme

Marked Example:
from The Convergence of the Twain (p. 141): ‘

In a solitude of seaa

Deep from human vanitya

And the pride of life that planned her,
stilly couches she.a

Alternate Rhyme = where
lines 1 and 3 have one rhyme sound, and 2 and 4 another

Marked Example: from
My Papa’s Waltz (p. 269):

The hand that held my wrista

Was battered on one knuckle;b

At every step you misseda

My right ear scraped a buckle.
b

Perfect Rhyme, also called exact rhyme,
full rhyme = two or more words or phrases share the same last stressed vowel and all
sounds following thatvowel examples: towel/vowel,aboard/ignored

Note that all of the
marked examples above use perfect rhyme. Older poetry used considerably more
perfect rhyme than current poetry does.

Slant rhyme, also called half rhyme, off rhyme, near rhymeis when either the stressed vowel or the sounds following
it differ and don’t match

II. METER

If rhyme is like melody, meter is the aspect of time,
involving rhythm and accents of poetry. Whereas musicians represent time and
beat with a time signature, like 4/4, 3/4, or 6/8, readers of poetry record the
beat of poetic words by dividing them into kinds of feet based on lengths of
syllables, and locations of spoken accents, the bits of words we typically say
louder.

Here are the major
kinds of POETIC FEET:

A footis the metrical unit by which a line of
poetry is measured. Unlike an inch for measuring distance, a poetic foot
measures both length in numbers of syllables, and sound in stressed versus
unstressed vowel sounds. One foot can
match one single word, or it can span several words. (Capital letters below
show which syllable is accented, said louder in relation to other syllables, in
most English speech). The names of feet look odd to us because they are all
derived from Greek.For example, ‘dactyl’
means finger in Greek.

iambany two syllables, usually a single word but not always, whose
accent or stressed sound is on the second syllable. CAPS show the stressed
syllable.

Examples = upON,
ariSE, aWAY

trocheeany
two syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on
the first syllable.

Examples = VIRtue,
FURther, LOVEly

anapestany
three syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on
the third syllable.

Examples = interVENE,
underSTAND,

dactylany three syllables, usually a single
word but not always, word whose accent is on the first syllable.

Examples = TENderly,
DESperate, HICKory

spondeeany two syllables, sometimes a single word
but not always, with strong accent on the first and second syllable.

Examples (in this case no one word, but
a series of words in this line:

The
long day wanes, the slow moon climbs.The words "day wanes" form a spondee after the iamb “the
LONG”.

pyrrhic any two
syllables, often across words, with each syllable unstressed/unaccented

III. Conventions for Marking Meter

Scanscion = measuring the stresses in a line to
determine its meter

A poetic line is any
group of words preceding the break for the next group. To mark the end of any
complete line when quoting poetry without block indenting it, place a space and
a / (called a virgule) followed by another space, and after the last word in
one line and before the first word in the next line: “Williams’ This Is Just to Say ends, ‘so sweet /
and so cold’.”

Caesura = a
pause, break, or cut in a poetic line.It is marked ‖, with 2 parallel vertical lines placed at the break

Medial Caesura =
pause in the middle of a line

Hypermetric line
= a line of regular, metered verse in which there is one more syllable than the
metric pattern requires

Catalectic line =
a line of regular, metered verse in which there is one fewer syllable than the
metric pattern requires

When we scan a poem
we name a complete poetic line by the kind of foot, use the adjective form for
the foot, followed by the length of meter.

A line of iambs = iambic meter

A line of trochees = trochaic meter

A line of anapests = anapestic meter

a line of dactyls =dactylic meter

The number of feet in a given line is maked as a form of the word meter.

dimeter -
a 2-foot line

trimetera 3-foot line

tetrametera 4-foot line

pentametera 5-foot line

hexametera 6-foot line

consequently a line with 5 iambic
feet is written in iambic pentameter

IV. Names
of Groups of lines

Stanza = any group of
lines forming a unit, offset by space from other such groups of lines.

Groups of stanzas
have names all taken from Italian words:

Stanza of 2 lines is acouplet

Stanza of 3 lines is atercet

Stanza of 4 lines is aquatrain

Stanza of 6 lines is asestet

Stanza of 7 lines is aseptet

Stanza of 8 lines is anoctave

V.How to Scan a poem.

Mark the rhyme, with single alphabets (eg.
abab)and the meter by counting the number
of feet, and the kind of feet in the line.

To start scanning
meter always mark the stressed syllables first, with a /then unstressed syllables with a u .
You can also use all CAPS for stressed, lower-case for unstressed if writing on
a computer.

Not all lines contain only one kind of foot.For example, quite often the first foot of an
iambic line is reversed, making it a trochee.When this happens in a poetic line it is called a "trochaic
inversion." As you'll see these poetic laws are meant to be interpreted,
and they are often bent.

My LOVE is OF a
BIRTH as RAREanumber of feet = 4;
type= iambs

As 'TIS, for OBject, STRANGE and
HIGH;bnumber of feet = 4
iambs

It WAS beGOTten BY desPAIRanumber of feet = 4 iambs

UpONImPOSSiBILiTY.bnumber of feet = 4
iambs

Remarks: the first stanza of Marvell's poem is therefore in iambic
tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is called alternate
rhyme. The basic foot is the iamb, and there are four of

Them, and four stresses, in each line.Note how the first line shows iamb can be
split across two words, and in line 4 how multiple iambs can occur within one
word. In the second line there is a caesura after the word ‘’tis’, and that the
comma helps create this pause.